Labor Estimating

Good project management in construction depends upon the well-organized application of labor, material and equipment as these components comprises a large part of the construction cost. In order to control cost of constructed facilities, labor estimating is one of the most important concerns.

The owner can gauge the success of an operating system on the whole with labor productivity by utilizing labor, equipment and capital to transfer labor efforts into useful productivity.

The labor estimating will vary according job location, accessibility of skilled labor, contract wage regulations, union or open shop labor requirements, general market conditions, and so on.

Labor Productivity is frequently described as functional units per labor hour for each type of construction task. The thorough application of labor hours to a quantity result in managing the exactness and competence of an estimate. The assessment and explanation of the labor hours often leads to the accuracy of the project's schedule and work force requirements.

The project costs include the major factors like combined costs for worker's compensation, unemployment insurance and social security taxes. The perfect method for including these costs is to describe labor hours and wage rates; then apply percentages to the labor costs.

If construction output is stated in terms of functional units, the labor productivity will be related with units of product per labor hour, for example cubic yards of concrete placed per hour or miles of highway paved per hour.

On the contrary if it is expressed with constant dollars, the labor productivity is recognized with value of construction (in constant dollars) per labor hour to which factors for waste, overhead, and profit are added to capitulate the unit cost in dollars. A labor dollar per unit of work (ex: $20 per cubic yard for grade beams or $30 per cubic yard for walls) will only be relevant if the cost history supports the data being used.

Now-a-days computer aided design software are available for perfect labor estimating. These softwares are applied for collecting and controlling all labor records, analyzing labor costs with projects and activities for inclusion in project-based cost analysis and reporting. In order to get a perfect estimation of the complete construction costs, just add the labor estimating cost and other contingency expenses.